Edinburgh, Scotland

This weekend I spent a few days in Edinburgh, Scotland. This has been one of my favorite weekends to date! Scotland is gorgeous! As soon as we got there, we went on a walking tour of the town. On the tour we got to see many of the big sights including Edinburgh Castle, the cafe where JK Rowling wrote most of the first two Harry Potter books, the cemetery where she got some of the names for the books, and many of the churches. After the tour, we went to a little pub where I tried haggis for the first time. It tasted delicious, and I enjoyed it as long as I didn’t think about what it was made out of (leftover sheep organs all mashed up and stuffed into its stomach and boiled for four hours). That night, we went on a ghost tour of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is one of the most haunted cities in the world. We went back into that cemetery and learned about its creepy past. There were over 200,000 people buried there, and we learned some ghost stories about some of the people there. After the cemetery, we went down into the locks. They are these little areas underground supporting the bridges. One of my friends actually got what we thought might be a ghost in one of his pictures. Our second day in Edinburgh, we ate breakfast at The Elephant House, which was where JK Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potter books. The food was great, and it was cool eating at or near the table where the books I grew up reading were wrote at. After breakfast, we went to Edinburgh Castle. It was up on top of a hill, and had awesome views of the city. Princess Anne was actually there at the same time of us, and we got to see her drive past us on her way out. After the castle, we attempted to hike up Arthur’s Seat before the sun set. We didn’t quite make it up to the peak, so we decided to climb up a smaller one, and watch the sunset from there. It was so pretty from up there. We could see all of the city lights as well as the ocean from it. The next morning, my friend, Ryan, and I woke up bright and early at 5:30 to climb all the way to the top of Arthur’s Seat to watch the sunrise. It was such a struggle getting out of bed, but we knew it would be worth it. The hike up there in the dark was kind of hard, and the bone chilling wind didn’t help. Being at the top was surreal. We had an awesome 360 view of the entire area. We were the only people up at the peak, so it was so peaceful. After watching the sunrise, we came back down and met up with the rest of the group and had breakfast at The Elephant House once again. After breakfast we all split up and my group went to this really cool area of the city that had all of these monuments on top of this hill. After hanging out there, some of us went to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which is the Queen’s residence in Scotland. It was my tenth castle to visit since coming to Europe, and definitely my favorite one. On the side of the castle, there were the ruins of a 1000 year old abbey. These were stunning. It’s amazing to think about how old they were. After visiting the castle and abbey, we hopped on our train back to London. My time in Scotland was way too short, and I know I have to go back sometime.

This is the statue of Greyfriars Bobby. He was the dog of a nightwatchman. He used to patrol the streets at night with his owner. After the nightwatchman died, Bobby stayed at his grave everyday. He even resisted when the monks who cared for the cemetery tried to chase him away. They eventually stopped bothering him, and let him stay. Bobby stayed with his owner until the day he died too.

6 thoughts on “Edinburgh, Scotland”

stunning pictures……what a beautiful city Edinburg is ! Experiences of a lifetime, so glad you are getting to enjoy your time in Europe and absorb so much there. Sure ready for you to come home though, miss you tons.